Archives

How can the mainstream media claim that the U.S. economy is “improving” when it is painfully obvious to anyone with a brain that the middle class is being absolutely eviscerated? According to numbers that were just released, the number of Americans on food stamps rose by more than 600,000 in a single month to an all-time record high of 47.7 million. Youth unemployment in the U.S. is at a post-World War II high and large companies have announced the elimination of more than 100,000 jobs since Barack Obama won the election. Consumer debt just hit a new record high and the federal government is accumulating debt at a much faster pace than it was at this time last year. So where is the evidence that the economy is getting better? The mainstream media says that the decline of the unemployment rate to “7.7 percent” is evidence that things are improving, but I showed how fraudulent that number is yesterday. The percentage of working age Americans with a job today is exactly where it was back in September 2009 in the midst of the last major economic crisis. The mainstream media is desperate for any shred of evidence that it can use to make people feel good and show that the Obama administration has our economy on the right track, and so they jump on any number that even looks remotely promising and they ignore mountains of evidence to the contrary. They don’t seem to care that poverty is absolutely exploding and that the number of Americans on food stamps has risen by nearly 50 percent while Obama has been in the White House. They don’t seem to care that the U.S. share of global GDP has fallen from 31.8 percent in 2001 to 21.6 percent in 2011. They don’t seem to care that more good paying jobs are being shipped overseas with each passing day. They don’t seem to care that formerly great U.S. cities that were once the envy of the entire globe are now crime-infested hellholes. All they seem to care about is putting out news that makes people feel warm and fuzzy and making sure that Obama looks good. Unfortunately, the truth is that the U.S. economy is steadily getting worse, and 2013 is not looking very promising at all right now. Hopefully at some point the mainstream media will take a break from coverage of the royal pregnancy and the latest celebrity scandals to report on the real problems that we are facing right now.

The following are 15 signs that the economy is rapidly getting worse as we head into 2013…

#1 According to numbers that were just released, the number of Americans on food stamps has risen to a new all-time record of 47.71 million. That is a huge increase of more than 600,000 over the previous reading of 47.10 million. After about a year of slow growth, it looks like the number of Americans on food stamps is starting to skyrocket once again. Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.

#2 Youth unemployment in the United States is now at the highest level that we have seen since World War II.

#3 According to Gallup, unemployment in the United States shot up very sharply during the month of November.

#4 It looks like the unemployment numbers are likely to get even worse. Since the election, dozens of large companies have announced major layoffs. Overall, large companies have announced the elimination of more than 100,000 jobs since November 6th.

#5 According to the Wall Street Journal, of the 40 biggest publicly traded corporate spenders, half of them plan to reduce capital expenditures over the coming months.

#6 Small business owners all over America are declaring that Obamacare is going to force them to start replacing full-time workers with part-time workers during 2013.

#7 One recent survey discovered that 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings.

#8 A different recent survey found that 28 percent of all Americans do not have a single penny saved for emergencies.

#10 Many Americans are trying to make ends meet for their families by going into more debt. Consumer borrowing hit another brand new record high in October. It looks like the American people have not learned from their past mistakes and have decided to roll up consumer debt at a faster pace than ever before.

#11 Median household income in America has fallen for four consecutive years. Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.

#12 Wall Street bankers are expecting “the worst bonus season” since 2008. Not a lot of people are going to shed tears over this one, but this is a sign that there is trouble in the financial world.

#13 Food banks all over America are reporting that more needy families than ever before are showing up to get food.

#14 As I wrote about yesterday, the federal government has run a deficit of $292 billion dollars during the first two months of fiscal 2013. That figure is $57 billion higher than it was during the same period last year. Government debt continues to soar wildly out of control and at some point all of that debt is absolutely going to crush us.

#15 I have written previously about how the once great city of Detroit has become a symbol of the downfall of the U.S. economy. Well, now the state of Michigan is laying the groundwork for a “managed bankruptcy” of Detroit. Sadly, many other large U.S. cities will likely follow suit over the next couple of years.

We should truly mourn for what is happening to Detroit. At one time, it was one of the most beautiful cities on earth. But now it is on the cutting edge of America’s economic decline. You can see some amazing before and after pictures of an abandoned Detroit school right here. Sadly, what is happening to Detroit will soon be happening to the rest of the country.

A similar thing is happening over in Europe. Greece is on the cutting edge of Europe’s economic decline, and people over there are becoming very desperate. The following is an excerpt from a Financial Post article about how the Greek middle class is turning to crime as the depression in that nation gets even worse…

In the once stable neighborhood of Kordelio, the unemployed and drug users gather in the parks, scaring away mothers and children, and crimes like chain snatching are on the rise. Many long-time residents have left, moving abroad or to their families’ villages, leaving behind empty houses, said Evangelia Rombou, 58, who has lived in Kordelio for 22 years.

But it is not just Greece that is grappling with these kinds of issues. Now even countries that had been thought to be “stable” are experiencing significant problems. For example, a massive crime wave has broken out in France. The crime wave in France is being blamed on “austerity”, but the government of France still spends far more than it brings in.

So how bad would things get in France if the French government actually did go to a balanced budget?

And how bad would things get in the United States if the federal government was not stealing more than 100 million dollars an hour from our children and our grandchildren?

Even in the midst of our debt-fueled prosperity we are starting to see glimpses of how desperate people will become when our country is someday forced to live within its means. For example, the following is from a report about an incident that happened in Columbus, Ohio the other day…

Columbus Police sprayed Mace on several people in a crowd that had gathered to sign up for a list to get subsidized housing at a northwest Columbus apartment complex.

Police said the crowd started to gather Friday night for the Saturday morning event at The Heritage apartment complex on Gatewood Road near Sunbury Road in northeast Columbus.

Authorities said that its highest number, the crowd reached 2,000 people.

Our entire economy is a giant mirage. Our prosperity has been purchased by stealing from the future. A few people have been warning that we have completely destroyed our future in the process, but both major political parties just continue to do it and the mainstream media just continues to cheer them on.

At some point this con game will end and this economic mirage will disappear. When that happens, millions of people all over this country are going to become very angry and very desperate.

Is the U.S. government stockpiling huge amounts of food and supplies in anticipation that something bad is about to happen? Is something about to cause a major economic crisis that will require large quantities of emergency food? For a while, I have been hearing things about the government storing food through the grapevine and I have not been sure what to think about those rumors. Well, today I received a phone call that blew me away. I debated for quite a while before I decided whether or not to share this information with you all. Normally I do not like to talk about anything unless I am able to prove it by pointing to an article in the mainstream media. But the source of the information that I am about to share with you is rock solid. I cannot reveal his name, so you will just have to trust me on that. Hopefully the following information will be one more “dot” as we all try to connect the dots about what is really going on out there.

This morning I received a call from a very prominent person in the storable food industry. He has asked me not to reveal his name. I have been dealing with him for an extended period of time and I consider him to be a rock-solid source. When I talked to him today, he had just received a huge order for storable food from a U.S. government source. He told me that the dollar amount of the order was in the “five figures”.

When he asked about why so much food was being ordered, the government source told him essentially that “you know what is coming”. When pushed further, the government official did not elaborate.

It was unclear whether this was part of a larger food stockpiling program by the government. Perhaps this order was just part of the normal preparations that government agencies make for potential emergencies.

Nobody could blame the government for storing up some emergency food. That is something that we all should be doing.

The truth is that the government is taking emergency preparedness very seriously these days. For example, you can see video of a high-level NASA official urging NASA employees to develop preparedness plans for their own families right here.

But what if this is a sign of something bigger?

Remember, this is not some rumor I just pulled off the Internet. This is not something that someone got from “an aunt” somewhere.

I got this information over the telephone from the person who took the order.

I promised that I would not reveal any more specific details, so I won’t.

But this does seem to fit with a pattern that we are beginning to see emerge.

Earlier this year, FEMA issued an RFI (Request For Information) that inquired about the availability of 140 million meals of emergency food. Apparently the food was meant to be stored up in case there was a “catastrophic disaster event” along the New Madrid Fault.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) procures and stores pre-packaged commercial meals to support readiness capability for immediate distribution to disaster survivors routinely. The purpose of this Request for Information is to identify sources of supply for meals in support of disaster relief efforts based on a catastrophic disaster event within the New Madrid Fault System for a survivor population of 7M to be utilized for the sustainment of life during a 10-day period of operations. FEMA is considering the following specifications (14M meals per day):

Requested Menus to include snacks (i.e. fruit mix, candy, chocolate/peanut butter squeezers, drink mix, condiments, and utensils). All meals/kits must have 36 months of remaining shelf life upon delivery. Packaging should be environmentally friendly.

Mysteriously, seven days later this RFI was cancelled.

At that same time, FEMA also issued an RFI that sought to identify a supplier for 140 million blankets. You can view that RFI right here. The following is an excerpt….

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) procures and stores blankets to support readiness capability for immediate distribution to disaster survivors routinely. The purpose of this Request for Information is to identify sources of supply for blankets in support of disaster relief efforts based on a catastrophic disaster event within the New Madrid Fault System for a survivor population of 7M to be utilized for the sustainment of life during a 10-day period of operations. FEMA is considering the following specifications (14M blankets per day):

- 100% cotton; – White; – 66″ x 90″

Also, there have been some much publicized shortages of storable feed recently. There has been much speculation about whether or not the government is part of the reason for these shortages.

There are some products that simply were not available for an extended period of time. For example, the following was posted on the Mountain House home page….

As you know we have removed #10 cans from our website temporarily. The reason for this is sales of #10 cans have continued to increase. OFD is allocating as much production capacity as possible to this market segment, but we must maintain capacity for our other market segments as well.

Look around you. Read the headlines. See the largest factories of food, potassium iodide, and other emergency product manufacturers literally closing their online stores and putting up signs like those on Mountain House’s Official Website and Thyrosafe’s Factory Webpage that explain, due to overwhelming demand, they are shutting down sales for the time being and hope to reopen someday.

Unfortunately, shortages have not been limited to storable food. Most Americans don’t realize this, but there is a significant shortage of certain pharmaceutical drugs in many areas of the country right now. Just check out the video news report posted below….

In addition, it is not just in the United States where food is being aggressively stored up. For example, a recent article in The Telegraph noted that governments all over the globe are now stockpiling food….

Authoritarian governments across the world are aggressively stockpiling food as a buffer against soaring food costs which they fear may stoke popular discontent.

Also, some governments are now gobbling up as much farmland as they can.

According to the New York Times, China has been buying up “vast tracts of Latin America’s agricultural heartland” and is seeking to acquire quality farmland all over the globe.

So what does all of this mean?

It could mean something.

It could mean nothing.

But as I have written about so much recently, we really do seem to be on the verge of a major economic crisis.

The signs that the financial world is melting down are all around us. I won’t take the time to repeat what I have covered in the last few days here. If you missed any of it, just go back and read these articles over….

One thing that I haven’t covered yet is a very curious move by Lloyd’s of London. It turns out the Lloyd’s of London has started pulling money out of banks in Europe’s peripheral economies according to Bloomberg….

Lloyd’s of London, concerned European governments may be unable to support lenders in a worsening debt crisis, has pulled deposits in some peripheral economies as the European Central Bank provided dollars to one euro-area institution.

At this point, world financial markets have officially entered “bear” territory. In fact, global stocks are down approximately 20 percent since May.

Many believe that what we have seen is just the beginning of another major financial crisis.

For example, in a recent editorial for The Ticker, Karl Denninger (who saw the 2008 crash coming) warned that the house of cards is starting to fall once again….

Well, America (and the world), you’ve been scammed by the financial institutions and governments for the last 30 years. 2008 was the first spasm of recognition but was short-circuited by…. you guessed it…. even more scams. Rather than demand truth and an end to the games the American consumer lapped up the frauds and schemes of the politicians on both sides of the aisle who conspired with the financiers to rip you off once again.

Later on in the editorial, Denninger stated that he hopes that all of us have “taken the last couple of years to become prepared”….

Now recognition of that fact is dawning on people in a convulsive fashion, and markets of all sorts are reacting as one would expect when their entire worldview is exposed as having been a gigantic and intentional pyramid scheme constructed of debt layered upon debt thatcannot be paid down. The wrong thing was done in 2008 and there is zero evidence that our government has changed one iota in their singular focus on misdirection and lies in this regard.

Welcome to awareness; I hope you’ve taken the last couple of years to become prepared.

Well, if the anecdotal evidence presented above is an indication of a larger trend, it appears that the government is getting prepared.

And if the government is stockpiling food, who can blame them?

It should be obvious to anyone that the world has become an incredibly unstable place.

Hopefully we are not about to enter another major economic crisis, but it never hurts to be prepared.

If anyone out there has any additional information that is relevant to this report, please let me know.

If the government really has started to aggressively stockpile food, that would be an important thing to know.

If it is happening, the mainstream media surely will not tell us about it. So we will have to rely on one another for information.

So what do you think about all of this? Please feel free to post a comment with your opinion below….